One of the valuable lessons I learned from Covey, and I learned a lot from him, is the concept and practice of proactivity. Man is driven both by passion and by reason. Often, I allow my passions and emotions drive me and I lead a life of reactivity. Being proactive is putting a space between a stimulus with all the passions it excites and the resulting action from the stimulus. And in that space, I exercise my freedom using the human endowments of self-awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will. In the process, I create my own environment, instead of allowing the environment to create and make me.

Authentic Christianity is a practice in proactivity. It is putting a space between my passions and my actions. And that space is a sacred space. It is prayer. Through prayer, I purify and sanctify my passions and emotions to transform and incarnate these into acts of love and service – to others, to the environment and also to myself.

Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles. Luke 6:12-16